Banksia

“ Several deep creeks were crossed, all running strongly with clear pelluced water to W. and N.W. The timber when it occured was bloodwood, stringy and iron-bark on the ridges, banksia, grevillia, and several kinds of tea-trees in the gullies, which were honey-combed and boggy. Two new kinds of palm were seen. The bush which seems to be what Kennedy alluded to as "heath," could only be got through by leading a horse ahead, the others following slowly behind him, the cattle then following in their track. ”

“ Every individual of the tribe, when travelling or going to a distance from their encampment, carries a fire stick, for the purpose of kindling fires, and in winter they are scarcely ever without one under their cloaks, for the sake of heat. It is generally a cone of Banksia grandis, which has the property of keeping ignited for a considerable time. Rotten bark, or touchwood, is also used for the same purpose. ”

“ See Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. v. art. "Papiergeld," p. 97 (Jena, 1893; ed. J. Conrad, L. Elster, W. Lexis and E. Löning) .
BANKSIA, an Australian genus of shrubs and trees (natural order Proteaceae) , with leathery leaves often deeply cut and handsome dense spikes of flowers. It is named after Sir Joseph Banks (q.v.) . The plants are grown in England for their handsome foliage as evergreen greenhouse shrubs.
BANKURA, a town and district of British India, within the Burdwan division of Bengal. The town has a population of 20,737. The district has an area of 2621 sq. ”

“ The wyang is of the tribe orchideæ; it is very pleasant eating when roasted. The mutta is the small bulbous root of a rush; it is very fibrous, and only edible at one season; the roots of fern, sedge, and other plants, are also used as articles of food; also mushrooms of two species, and another kind of fungus. When the different species of banksia first come into bloom, they collect from the flowers a considerable quantity of honey, of which the natives are particularly fond, and gather large quantities of the flowers "monca" to suck ”

“ Brown in Lin. Soc. Transac. 10. p.
208. Prodr. 394. Hort. Kew. ed. alt. 1. p. 217.
Roem. et Sch. Syst. Veg. 3. p. 441
Banksia Robur. Cavan. ic. 6. p. 29. t. 543.
Banksia Dilleniæfolia. Knight et Salisb. Prot. 113.
Banksia uncigera. Knight et Salisb. Prot. 112.
M. Cavanilles describes this shrub as a tree thirty feet
high, in which he is followed by Mr. Salisbury; but we
are informed by Mr. Brown, in his Prodomus, that it is
only a low shrub, growing plentifully in the marshes
near Sidney, New South Wales. ”

“ At least, the girl in green is our Banshee. I saw her before the death of a cousin of mine, and she appeared to my mother the night before my father died. I don’t know what the other apparition could have been, unless it was what my father used to term the ‘hateful Banshee,’ which he said was only supposed to appear before some very dreadful catastrophe, worse even than death, if anything could be worse.”
“You haven’t the monopoly of Banshees,” Ralph laughed. “We have one too, and I am positive the woman I saw—the beautiful woman I mean—was the O’Donnell Banshee. ”

“ No country besides Ireland possesses a Banshee, though some countries possess a family or national ghost somewhat resembling it. In Germany, for example, popular tradition is full of rumours of white ladies who haunt castles, woods, rivers, and mountains, where they may be seen combing their yellow hair, or playing on harps or spinning. ”

“ In the notes to the 1844 edition of Thomas Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland,” we find this paragraph taken from the works of the Brothers Grimm and manuscript communications from Dr Wilhelm Grimm:
“In the Tyrol they believe in a spirit which looks in at the window of a house in which a person is to die (Deutsche Sagen, No. 266) , the White Woman with a veil over her head answers to the Banshee, but the tradition of the Klage-weib (mourning woman) in the Lünchurger Heath (Spiels Archiv. ii. 297) resembles it more. ”

“ The fashionable Banyai youth first divides his hair into small tufts, and draws them out as far as he can, encircling each tuft with a spiral bandage of vegetable tissue. The various tufts are then dyed red, and as they are sometimes a foot in length, and hang upon the shoulders, they present a very remarkable aspect. When the Banyai travel, they are fearful of damaging their elaborate headdress, and so they gather it up in a bundle, and tie it on the top of the head.
Their government is equally simple and sensible. They choose their own chief, although they always keep to the same family. ”

“ But at the present day it will probably be enough to describe them as a tribe of Pathans who inhabit the 395Kurram and Miranzai Valleys down to Kohat. Bangash families are also settled in Persia and in some parts of India, notably in Farakhabad, the Nawab of which place, who was banished from India for his conduct during the Mutiny, being descended from a Bangash family. They are Gar in politics and partly Shiah and partly Sunni. They enlist readily in the Indian Army and Border Militia, and are thought well of, being quieter than most Pathans. ”

“ As a rule, however, the Banshee is not seen, it is only heard, and it announces its advent in a variety of ways; sometimes by groaning, sometimes by wailing, and sometimes by uttering the most blood-curdling of screams, which I can only liken to the screams a woman might make if she were being done to death in a very cruel and violent manner. Occasionally I have heard of Banshees clapping their hands, and tapping and scratching at walls and window-panes, and, not infrequently, I have heard of them signalling their arrival by terrific crashes and thumps. ”

“ A case of the two Banshees resulting in a dual Banshee haunting was told me quite recently by a man whom I met in Paris at Henriette’s in Montparnasse. He was a Scot, a journalist, of the name of Menzies, and his story concerned an Irish friend of his, also a journalist, whom I will call O’Hara.
From what I could gather, these two men were of an absolutely opposite nature. O’Hara—warm-hearted, impulsive, and generous to a degree; Menzies—somewhat cold, careful with regard to money, and extremely cautious ”

“ The Bangash Tribe “The Kohat, Miranzai and southern part of the Kurram Valley,” Oliver tells us, “are mainly Bangash; those towards Kohat mostly Sunnis, the bulk of the remainder Shiahs. The Westerns wear their beards long, with a few short Jewish ringlets on either side of the face, shaving the rest of the head; the Easterns clip them short; otherwise there is not much difference. Physically they are quite up to the average Pathans, though they are not generally credited with great fighting qualities. A few deal in salt, but they are eminently an agricultural rather than a pastoral people. ”

“ According to Mr McAnnaly, the malevolent Banshee is invariably “a horrible hag with ugly, distorted features; maledictions are written in every line of her wrinkled face, and her outstretched arms call down curses on the doomed member of the hated race.” ”

“ The little bannock with the hole,
O it will be the charm.
I knead it, I knead it, 'twixt my palms,
And all the bairns I tell—
O it's Finlay's little bannock
For going to the well.
THE BANSHEE. Knee-deep she waded in the pool—
The Banshee robed in green—
She sang yon song the whole night long,
And washed the linen clean;
The linen that would wrap the dead
She beetled on a stone,
She stood with dripping hands, blood-red,
Low singing all alone—
His linen robes are pure and white, For Fergus More must die to-night! ”

“ The "Banshee" is a gloomy, foreboding spirit, of rather aristocratic tastes, as she is only attached to highly respectable old families. She never appears but to announce some great misfortune, or the death of a member of the household. She does this by howling and shrieking in the night; and sometimes, they say, she is seen—a tall, pale woman, in long white robes, with black hair flying in the wind.
The most amusing of these supernatural creatures is the Leprehawn, or Luriceen, or Clericaune, the brogue-maker of the "good people." ”

“ He confines the Banshee to families of pure Milesian stock, and declares it is never to be found attached [Pg 11] to the descendants of the multitudinous English and Scotch settlers who have, from time to time, migrated to Ireland; nor even to the descendants of the Norman adventurers who accompanied Strongbow to the Green Isle in the twelfth century.
Lady Wilde [1] goes to the other extreme and allows considerable latitude. She affirms that the Banshee attaches itself not only to certain families of historic lineage, but also to persons gifted with song and music. ”

“ For my own part I am inclined to adopt a middle course; I do not believe that the Banshee would be deterred from haunting a family of historical fame and Milesian descent—such as the O’Neills or O’Donnells—simply because in that family was an occasional strain of Saxon or Norman blood, but, on the other hand, I do not think the Banshee would ever haunt a family that was not originally at least Celtic Irish—such, for instance, as the Fitz-Williams or Fitz-Warrens—although in that family there might happen to be periodic infusions of Milesian blood. ”

“ Occasionally, too, the German family ghost, like the Banshee, is heard playing on a harp, but here I think the likeness ends. There are no very striking characteristics in the appearance of the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns, she would seem to be neither very beautiful nor the reverse ”

“ A hideous hag with a shock head of tow-coloured hair, who stood on the staircase laughing devilishly, and then, all at once, vanished. She is known as the bad Banshee to distinguish her from the good one, which is, so I have always been led to understand, very beautiful, but which never manifests itself, saving when anything especially dreadful is going to happen to an O’Hara. ”

“ Once again, then, the Banshee confines itself solely to families of bona-fide ancient Irish descent. As to its origin, in spite of arbitrary assertions made by certain people, none of whom, by the way, are of Irish extraction—that no one knows. As a matter of fact the Banshee has a number of origins, for there is not one Banshee only—as so many people seem to think—but many; each clan possessing a Banshee of its own. ”

“ This custom shows that a certain amount of culture has been attained by the Banyai, and the social condition of their women is a still stronger proof. In most parts of savage Africa the woman is little more than a beast of burden, and has no more to do with the management of affairs or with her husband’s counsels than the cows for which he has bought her. In Banyai-land, however, the women have not only their full share of power, but rather more than their share, the husbands never venturing to undertake any business or to conduct any bargain without the consent of their wives. ”

“ I disagree, in toto, with Lady Wilde’s theory that, occasionally, the Banshee haunts a person who is extremely poetical and musical, simply because he happens to be thus talented. In my [Pg 12] opinion, to be haunted by the Banshee one must belong to an Irish family that is, at least, a thousand years old; were it not so, we should assuredly find the Banshee haunting certain of the musical and poetical geniuses of every race all over the world—black and yellow, perhaps, no less than white—which certainly is not the case. ”

“ Lady Wilde goes on to tell us no harm ever comes of the Banshee’s visit, unless she is seen in the act of crying, when her wails may be taken as a certain sign that some member of the family will shortly die. Mr McAnnaly corroborates this by stating that on one occasion one of the O’Neills of Shane Castle heard the Banshee crying, just as he was about to set out on a journey, and perished soon [Pg 61] afterwards, which is somewhat unusual, because in the majority of cases I have come across the Banshee does not manifest itself at all to the person whose death it predicts. ”

“ At this time Bansberia was a small insignificant village with a sparse population, consisting mostly, of the dregs and scum of society. It was largely covered with thick jungles in which the denizens of the forest held their solitary sway. ”

“ Miss O’Rorke began, “a most unpleasant attachment; in other words, a most unpleasant Banshee. Being Irish, you will not laugh, of course, as many English people do, at what I say. You know as well as I do, perhaps, that many of the really ancient Irish families possess Banshees.”
Miss S—— nodded. “We have one ourselves,” she remarked, “but pray go on. I am intensely interested.”
“Well, unlike most of the Banshees,” Miss Georgina continued, “ours is appallingly ugly and [Pg 49] malevolent; so frightful, indeed, that to see it, even, is sometimes fatal. ”

“ In his “Letters on Demonology” he says: “Several families of the Highlands of Scotland anciently laid claim to the distinction of an attendant spirit, who performed the office of the Irish Banshee,” and he particularly referred to the ghostly cries and lamentations which foreboded death to members of the Clan of MacLean of Lochbery. But though many of the Highland families do possess such a ghost, unlike the Banshee, it is not restricted to the feminine sex, nor does its origin, as a rule, date back to anything like such remote times. ”

“ It is, I think, quite conceivable that she is no earth-bound soul, but some impersonating elemental, which—like the Banshee—has, for some strange and wholly inexplicable reason, attached itself to the unfortunate Hohenzollerns, and their relatives and kinsmen. ”

“ Presently, the singing having ceased, the old woman got up and dried her tears. Her anxiety, however, was not allayed; all through the night she could still be heard, every now and again, crying quietly and whispering to herself “’Twas the Banshee! Banshee!”; and in the morning Norah, suddenly growing alarmingly ill, passed away before medical assistance could be summoned.
A case of Banshee haunting that is somewhat unusually pathetic was once related to me in [Pg 29] connection with a Dublin branch of the once powerful clan of McGrath. ”